“How Pizza Conquered America” and “Sushi Takes Over”

America was in crisis. The stock market had crashed. Millions were out of work. It was the early 1930s, and the United States was in the midst of one of its darkest periods: the Great Depression.

In New York City, Frank Mastro wanted to help. His community—mostly recent immigrants from Italy—had been hit hard. Many families were struggling to put food on the table. Mastro, who made his living selling restaurant supplies, wanted to do something for them.

But what?

And then it came to him.

Pizza!

Today, America eats more pizza than any other country—a whopping 350 slices per second. But in the 1930s, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone in the U.S. who had even heard of it. Pizza was known only among Italian Americans and, for the most part, was available only in Italian bakeries and grocery stores.

Mastro, who had come to New York with his family when he was 10, remembered fondly the delicious pizzas he ate as a child in Italy. He believed that if more Americans had a chance to taste pizza, they would love it—just as they loved the hamburger, a German food that had recently become popular in the U.S.

If pizza caught on, Mastro thought, it could save his community from their hardships. Operating a pizzeria would be a way for families to make a good living. At the same time, because pizza was cheap, struggling families would have an inexpensive option for dinner.

There was one problem though.

Making pizza was a total pain. 

In the 1930s, pizza was baked in an enormous oven the size of an elephant. These ovens were heated with coal, took hours to get hot, and required constant supervision from a skilled baker to keep the pie from burning to ash. To make his pizza dreams come true, Mastro knew he would need to get creative.

So Mastro decided to invent a new oven.

After a few months of tinkering, he had designed a pizza oven that was simple, sleek, and efficient. It was powered by inexpensive gas, baked multiple pizzas in minutes, and could be operated by anyone.

Yet when Mastro tried to sell his ovens, restaurant owners scoffed at him. Pizza, they said, wouldn’t taste the same if it wasn’t made the traditional way.

Mastro was frustrated, but he refused to give up. Instead, he opened Frank Mastro’s Model Pizzeria, where a chef made pizzas in front of a huge window for all to see. Mastro demonstrated how fast and easy it was to make delicious pizza in his new gas oven, and he invited curious passersby to come in and sample a slice. Sales for Mastro’s ovens soon skyrocketed.

With each oven he sold, Mastro provided instructions on how to bake the perfect pie along with a guide for how to open and run a successful pizza restaurant. He helped hundreds of families start their own pizzerias; sometimes he even loaned people money to help get their businesses up and running.

Over the next two decades, the number of pizzerias in America soared from 500 to 20,000, and Mastro was dubbed “The Pizza King.”    

At the time of Mastro’s death in 1957, pizzerias were flourishing in New York and several other East Coast cities. Frank’s son, Vinnie, took over the family business and expanded it further, even pioneering frozen pizza dough. But when Vinnie died suddenly in 1965, the Mastro business collapsed and the family name was lost to time.

Nevertheless, Mastro’s legacy lives on in the 30 million slices of pizza eaten in the United States every day.

Today, you can grab a thin-crust slice in New York for $2.50. In Chicago, you can dig into a deep-dish pie smothered in sausage and mozzarella. In Detroit, you can enjoy a rectangular pie with the tomato sauce on top of the cheese. Indeed, nearly anywhere you go in America today, you can find pizza, often with a unique regional twist.

“My father used to say that pizza would become as popular as the hot dog,” Mastro’s daughter Madeline said. “Nobody believed him. Now I say, ‘Do you see, Dad? You were right.’”

It was 1964, and Noritoshi Kanai had recently arrived in Los Angeles from Japan. An ambitious businessman, Kanai was convinced he could be a success in America.

How? Convince Americans to fall in love with sushi—a beloved Japanese dish usually consisting of raw fish and sticky rice.

There was just one problem: Most Americans thought the idea of eating raw seafood was, well, gross.

The 1960s were a time of change in America. Faster, cheaper air travel meant more Americans could visit faraway countries, like Japan—and they often returned home with a taste for “exotic” foods. New refrigeration technology made it possible to ship frozen fish and vegetables across great distances.
The economy was growing, and more Americans could afford to eat out.

There was also growing fascination with Japanese culture. For decades, prejudice against Japanese Americans had been strong in the U.S. It had worsened during World War II, when Japan and the U.S. were bitter enemies. But by the 1960s, anti-Japanese sentiment in the U.S. was beginning to fade. Trade between the two countries was flourishing. Kanai thought the time was right to put Japanese food on the American dinner plate.

Kanai approached a Japanese restaurant owner in L.A. with his big idea: Add a sushi bar.

A sushi bar is a place where patrons can order sushi and watch the chef expertly create nigiri (seafood or vegetables over rice), sashimi (seafood alone), and maki (seafood, rice, and vegetables, wrapped in seaweed). Kanai said he would bring a top-notch sushi chef over from Japan and import the ingredients himself.

At first, the owner was skeptical. He was sure no one would come. But Kanai was persuasive, and the owner decided to take a chance.    

Word got out, and soon Japanese businessmen longing for a taste of home were flocking to the new sushi bar—and bringing their American colleagues with them. Other sushi restaurants began to pop up in L.A., New York, and Chicago. In Hollywood, new sushi eateries catered to movie stars, and eating sushi became a status symbol.

Today, you can find sushi just about anywhere, from ritzy New York restaurants to Dodger Stadium in L.A. Many regions have their own spins. The California roll uses avocado instead of raw tuna. The Philadelphia roll features cream cheese, smoked salmon, and cucumber. Americans spend more than $2 billion a year on sushi, which is praised by health experts for its protein and healthy fats.

Kanai died in 2017 at age 94. In a sushi documentary made shortly before his death, he walks with a sense of pride through the streets of L.A., where there are now more than 3,300 sushi restaurants.

His dream had come true.

This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue.